Championing Data: CFO Jennifer Vanderveldt

“You cannot predict the future without having a very stable, validated, reliable view of what happened yesterday,” Jennifer Vanderveldt, CFO of Mammoth Holdings says in the first six minutes of our interview.  That statement sets the tone for our Zoom call. Vanderveldt is former head of strategy,...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 28, 2022

Value Drivers: A Q&A With Reed Phillips and Charles Slack

"CFOs are the people that should be the custodians of value in a company." This basic premise underscores the purpose and meaning behind Reed Phillips' and Charles Slack's hypothesis that finance chiefs, perhaps better than anyone in the organization, are equipped to both value the company and se...

By Andy Burt • Oct. 27, 2022

Aiming for Growth While Reducing Waste: CFO Bill Strong

As technology integrates itself into every fiber of the economy, food tends to be no different. Making its way into food tech is Apeel Sciences, a Santa Barbara-based company that has developed a peel-like product derived from the skins of fruits and vegetables. It is placed on produce to preserv...

By Adam Zaki • Oct. 20, 2022

Fine-Tuning Franchise Performance: CFO John Cappadona

School of Rock CFO John Cappadona is one of a burgeoning group of finance chiefs who traversed the financial planning and analysis route to the CFO seat. For Cappadona, interpreting key performance indicators and optimizing growth while maximizing cash flow and profitability is second nature. ...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 14, 2022

From CPA to CFO: Brian Fitzgerald

CFO of World Insurance Associates, Brian Fitzgerald, credits his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting and his first post-college job as a PwC auditor for career experiences that led to the CFO’s office. When he became an assistant controller for a small, entrepreneurial company, he disco...

By Sandra Beckwith • Oct. 6, 2022

Refining the Supply Chain: CFO Jeff Shepherd

CFO Jeff Shepherd saw the world as an audit and consulting partner at EY, before helping client company General Motors through its bankruptcy in 2009. The following year, Shepherd joined GM as assistant controller, rising to become controller of General Motors Europe. As someone who is admittedly...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 29, 2022

In a Down Economy, Invest Internally: CFO Tony Tiscornia

Compounded with concerns over rising interest rates, market volatility, and inflation, companies are starting to curb growth plans. While it may make sense to press pause on large-scale financial moves such as an IPO or acquisition, that doesn’t mean growth has to halt entirely. Tony Tiscornia, C...

By Sandra Beckwith • Sept. 15, 2022

From Analyst to CFO by Age 30: Michelle Gilson

Michelle Gilson was a 30-year-old biotech equity research analyst and managing director earlier this year when Arcellx, a biotechnology company that develops cell therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, CEO Rami Elghandour recruited her for its CFO position, a role she accepted in May.  Aft...

By Sandra Beckwith • Sept. 8, 2022

Klaviyo CFO Amanda Whalen: ‘Big Picture Thinking, Hands-On Balance’

Amanda Whalen’s nearly 10-year experience as a CFO spans across industries including food supply, big box stores, and healthcare. Most recently, Whalen held the role of EVP and CFO of Walmart International. After recently taking the CFO role at Klaviyo, a tech company specializing in marketing au...

By Adam Zaki • Sept. 2, 2022

Widening the Moat: CFO Brian Miller

In terms of time at one company, CFO Brian Miller is at the far end of the bell curve — 14 years heading up finance at Tyler Technologies. That’s about triple the average CFO tenure. Miller’s long service (he's been with Tyler since 1997) offers significant advantages to the publicly held governm...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 19, 2022

22 Years of Institutional Knowledge: CFO Charles Freund

Before joining FLEETCOR 22 years ago, Charles Freund worked with a variety of companies and business models as a management consultant for almost seven years. After connecting with the firm’s CEO as a client, he signed on as the corporate payment company’s business development director. Freund wa...

By Sandra Beckwith • Aug. 4, 2022

Leading With Empathy: CFO Revati ‘Rani’ Puranik

According to Catalyst research, empathy in the workplace boosts productivity, innovation, and engagement. Revati “Rani” Puranik, global CFO of oil and gas equipment manufacturer Worldwide Oilfield Machine (WOM), has used that skill to establish trust and make informed decisions while building the...

By Sandra Beckwith • July 29, 2022

Upgrading the Finance Department: CFO Rebeca Sanchez Sarmiento

CFO Rebeca Sanchez Sarmiento left behind her equity research roots in New York for Los Angeles nearly a decade ago. She has held various corporate strategy and finance roles for private-equity-owned companies since then, landing her first CFO gig at ATTOM Data Solutions in January 2018. Sanchez S...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 22, 2022

Accountant First: CFO Adriana Carpenter

While Adriana Carpenter started her career in finance, it wasn’t long before she knew she wanted to be an accountant. After earning a CPA credential at night school while working as a financial analyst and accounting manager at Texas Instruments, Carpenter moved into public accounting. She spent ...

By Sandra Beckwith • July 7, 2022

Restoring Integrity: MiMedx CFO Pete Carlson

When the Enron case caused Arthur Andersen to implode, Pete Carlson was a partner. Six years later, he was a controller at Wachovia when the government forced the distressed bank to sell itself to Wells Fargo. While both organizations helped sow the seeds of their own demise, few saw those disast...

By Vincent Ryan • June 30, 2022

Human-Centric Finance, Part 2: ‘The Complexity is Accelerating’

The evolution of the CFO role is never more apparent than when you're surrounded by hundreds of them and they can offer slightly different takes on emerging challenges. Two of those people with high visibility in this emergence are Andrew Hoag, CEO of Teampay, and Marshall Cooper, CEO of the Chie...

By Andy Burt • June 21, 2022

Joining a Tech Icon: Adobe CFO Dan Durn

Daniel J. Durn has been a finance chief in the semiconductor industry for over a decade. By leaving Applied Materials and joining Adobe in October 2021, he moved downstream in the tech supply chain. He is now leading finance at the iconic software company that serves professional designers, graph...

By Vincent Ryan • June 16, 2022

Data Delivers: CFO John Collins

John Collins is pioneering a new path to the CFO role, one that draws on not only his experience as an institutional investor but as a data scientist as well. After starting at LivePerson as senior vice president of quantitative strategy charged with leveraging data to improve strategic decision-...

By Sandra Beckwith • June 1, 2022

Path to the Top: CFO Sue Vestri

During her senior year as an accounting major at Temple University, Sue Vestri had second thoughts about her career choice. Would she get bored in accounting? No, it turned out. Not only was Vestri good at her first accounting job at a large national real estate company, but she also enjoyed the ...

By Sandra Beckwith • May 9, 2022

Temp to Top: Leanne Cunningham’s Ascent to CFO

When Leanne Cunningham, CFO of Brown-Forman, asked if this story could highlight the company as much as her own career path, I wasn’t surprised. She believes firmly her success is intertwined with the environment and values of the 152-year-old company that makes Jack Daniels, Old Forester, and He...

By Vincent Ryan • April 28, 2022

Pharma CFO Anthony Doyle Plans for Uncertainty

“If we tell you something, it's because we believe it, and we're neither sandbaggers nor are we going to lead with our chin and put out outrageous goals,” said Anthony Doyle, CFO of BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, when asked to describe how the publicly held biotech has established credibility by execu...

By Vincent Ryan • April 21, 2022

Disrupting Insurance: CFO Teodora Gouneva

Teodora Gouneva had no background in payments or travel before joining PayPal and 15 years later Airbnb, holding roles like finance chief of PayPal’s Braintree and Venmo divisions. That doesn't matter much, though, when a company is disrupting old ways of doing business. In December 2021, she lef...

By Vincent Ryan • April 18, 2022

Legal Eagle — CFO Roberto Cuca

As an attorney at a law firm representing biopharma industry clients early in his career, Roberto Cuca worked alongside finance leaders structuring licensing agreements and other collaborations. It wasn’t long before he knew that a corporate finance role would allow him to contribute more broadly...

By Sandra Beckwith • April 5, 2022

Leading Finance at an AI Unicorn: Stephane Berthier

Stephane Berthier knows about handling exponential growth. As a Silicon Valley partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he’s worked with pre-IPO tech companies for 20 years. You might recognize some of the client names: VMware, Splunk, ServiceNow, Crowdstrike, Databricks.  Fourteen months ago, Berthier...

By Vincent Ryan • April 4, 2022

Prakash Hariharan: ‘CFOs Need to Have a Good Partner Ecosystem’

The role of the CFO over the past 10 to 15 years, amid economic recovery, expansion, pandemic, and now recovery and growth expansion again has had a considerable arc. Chief financial officers who have lived it and led through it have risen to meet myriad challenges. And for others who are outside...

By Andy Burt • March 14, 2022